Disclaimer: I do not own Calvin and Hobbes. I do, however, own Nicole and the alien race which threatens Earth. I own the plot, in a manner of speaking. This story is what could be an alternate birth of Spaceman Spiff, as I should have said in the first chapter. Slightly AU, by the way. I'll try work in more original Calvin in.

No flames in this chapter, with Hobbes coming up.

And I can truthfully say, Elvenking and Tashlan, I only read the first installation of "A Week in the Lives of Calvin and Hobbes." After that I was caught up in "Then Fall Hobbes," so any resemblance is coincidence. And I read it today after getting your review, Elvenking…damn, Hobbes in a box. That was a coincidink today, I swear! May God strike me down dead if I'm not…HA!

* ** *

"Excuse me?"

Calvin shook his head as he realized that this wasn't Susie.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else. I guess you couldn't be. She was…murdered."

His new roomate frowned with sympathy. "I'm sorry to hear that."

She was tall, almost Calvin's height, and his brown-auburn hair cascaded almost over her shoulders, like Susie's had after she had let it grow. She was dressed properly, unlike the guys, who were stripped to the waist. She had an old Abercrombie and Fitch shirt, a little small after two years of use, but it matched her eyes. Her eyes might have once been two brilliant drops of blue as crisp as the sky, but several years of tedious slave work had dulled them into the color of faded denim. Susie's eyes had never been like that, but there was a look in those eyes, one that was bold and tenacious, just like Susie had been.

"Hi, I'm Nicole." Calvin almost didn't shake her hand, realizing that the past three friends, Hobbes, Susie, and Jerad, had all been lost, two of which murdered.

"I'm…Calvin. It's nice to meet you, Nicole…?"

"Jonas. Nicole Jonas. And you are Calvin…?"

"Calvin-" before he could spill his last name, a mech-suit popped his head into the tent. "Camp A is needed in Zone H. The bulinium core spilled."

"Bulinium? Is that nuclear, per chance?"

The mech-suit made an attempt to shrug. "Could be."

Calvin started to get angry. The aliens had the mech-suits! They seemed pretty protective! Why couldn't they do the work?

"Alright, I'll get right on it." he said through clenched teeth. The suit nodded and strolled onto the next tent.

"Well, prepare your gloves for some potent clean-up duty." Nicole nodded and grabbed the paperthin gloves the aliens had "graciously" provided.

* ** *

Calvin and Nicole had finished an hour later than they would have if it had been, say, a water spill. They had taken great care of making sure that nothing was to touch them.

They returned to their tents, beaten, and collapsed onto their beds. Nicole had fallen almost right to sleep, Calvin noticed, but he remained awake, thinking. He did that a lot these days.

This couldn't keep up. He couldn't last the rest of his long life like this. He was supposed to be famous, legendary, he was supposed to be remembered for ages to come! Nobody remembers a slave. He was going to do things, go places, meet people. Of course, under alien rule, none of that mattered now.

They had to have a weakness. Everything else has one. Calvin certainly did, and that had been Susie, Hobbes, and Jerad, and all had been hit.

Calvin sighed as he was hit with a fierce wave of nostalgia. He was suddenly homesick, and missed deeply the old days, before he discovered life elsewhere.

Calvin pulled out from under his bed his safe box, which was nothing more than an old Nike shoebox he had managed to steal from a store under two guards watchful eyes. He had made some excuse that he would be a better slave if he could get some better shoes. They had agreed and watched him like a hawk.

The shoes he wore now, in bed, and the box held all the things that meant something to him that he had pulled from the flaming wreckage of his house so long ago.

He remembered that night, finding his parents fluids and insides sprayed over the walls of the last room standing. He collapsed after he had nearly cried himself dry from the murder of Susie, and managed to find some more tears deep inside. The guards who had let him come to find his treasured items prodded him with their hands to get going. He cursed them, cursed them loudly, and shut up when one of them cocked their plasma cannon.

He had picked up his mother's wedding ring, and stowed it into his pocket. He had felt no obligation to keep the finger still attached to it. He had also found a crumpled picture of him and Susie, taken only a week before. That he placed close to his heart.

Also among the wreckage he found something odd, something he had normally kept hidden deep under his bed when friends were over, and on his bed when they were gone.

Under a scorched piece of refrigerator he had found Hobbes.

Now, he picked Hobbes up out of the box. He had been packed tightly so as to fit in, and had made a naturally bend forward, but Calvin smoothed him out.

This was not the Hobbes he had grown up with. His orange fur had fallen out as if he had had mange. His whiskers, plastic, had bent in odd positions, and his eyes were cut and scratched beads. Calvin felt a tear grow in his eyes.

Hobbes' glazed eyes stared into Calvin's, the eyes of a stuffed animal, not a hunter, not the Hobbes Calvin had once known.

"Oh Hobbes, you would have known what to do…"

"So do you."

Calvin blinked his eyes open and his tears back to find Hobbes was gone from his lap. The source of the voice, he found, was in the center of the tent. He brought his eyes up down onto the eyes of Hobbes.

This was the real Hobbes, the Hobbes whose fur was real, not manufactured, and would bound up and down with gravity as he pranced forward, or catapulted himself at Calvin, and his whiskers were long and straight and healthy whiskers, ones that a tiger could envy. And his eyes showed more emotion that Calvin could ever remember.

"You do know Calvin. I wasn't always the one with the ideas. You know how you can do this, how to defeat the Furies."

"The Furies?" he asked, blinking back happy tears.

"You'll know what I mean later. Now, haven't you noticed, on the nights you just look up at the sky, you can see a small alien ship or two fly by?"

"Yes…"

"Haven't you noticed that there are more and more of them in this area lately, and sometimes in the west you can see some pretty bright lights that appear on a distant hill."

Calvin nodded. "As a matter of fact, I do."

Hobbes bent down and traced in the soft sand of the floor. Calvin watched, intrigued, as his childhood friend and hero began to trace out his idea on the sand.

It seemed to resemble some sort of small spacecraft, but had the shakiness of a child's drawing. It was small, about built for one person or alien, and was rounded like a saucer. The back was propped with two aerodynamic fins, and the cockpit was a single glass bubble. Inside he could see a small seat, a rather intricate control panel, and two oxygen tanks on the back of the seat.

"That looks familiar…"

"Good. It should. I tried to draw it well, tried to draw it just spiffy for you."

Spiffy

Spiffy

Spiff

Spiff!

Calvin was suddenly hit with a bolt of realization. Hobbes nodded as he saw Calvin's wave of knowingness.

"Good. I need to go now, but I will be back,"

Calvin grinned. "Thanks buddy."

"You're welcome."

"Come back soon to help me, okay?-"

But when he looked down, all that was there was a stuffed animal on the ground. Calvin frowned and picked up the small stuffed animal, hugged it, and put him back in his safe box.

Calvin went to bed that night believing it had indeed been in his head, and it all had been made up, save the plan. He would work it out in the morning, he decided, and before he went to bed, he would remark mentally he was sure that the drawing in the sand of a spaceship was indeed also a making of his own.

However, it was the childlike shakiness of the drawing that worried him through the night.